EASTON — Usually it takes name recognition, intense media coverage or advertising, vast campaign funds and/or accusations of serious scandal to unseat an incumbent member of Congress.

Steve Waterworth has none of these advantages, but that has not discouraged him from challenging U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Peoria, twice.

“It’s the American way,” Waterworth, 58, a retired Air National Guard master sergeant from rural Easton, said of his decision to run as the Democratic candidate for the 18th Congressional District seat a second time. “I like to see a churning of ideas.”

Waterworth is running unopposed in the March 21 Democratic primary and will face LaHood, who is seeking a seventh term, in November. In 2004 he received only 30 percent of the vote district-wide against LaHood.

Small war chest

He spent just $5,000 on his last campaign, and he anticipates this campaign will be similar, relying on public appearances and news coverage to spread his message. He does not expect substantial support from the national or state Democratic Party because, he said, political organizations prefer to focus on open congressional races with no incumbent running.

“I will never be able to have the kind of support an incumbent congressman has,” he said.

But Waterworth continues to set his sights on Congress, rather than state or county office, because he believes the most one-sided political races are precisely those that need an opponent to stir things up.

“In any organization, if one person stays in office too long, things stagnate,” he said. “Even if they are doing a good job, there should be a turnover.”

Farm boy

Waterworth grew up on a farm south of Easton, near his current residence, and served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. He later worked for his father’s farming operation and served in the Illinois Air National Guard.

In 1994, his wife Barbara died in a car crash, leaving him to raise their three daughters alone.

“The girls were in college, high school and eighth grade” at the time, he said. “I concentrated on taking care of them, and decided to dedicate myself to helping the community.”

He serves on the board of directors of the Central Illinois Economic Development Corporation in Lincoln, which oversees programs such as Head Start, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Meals on Wheels and other outreaches in an area that includes Mason County.

Waterworth holds two local offices, as Crane Creek Township clerk and as a member of the Easton Park District board. In 2004, he decided to challenge LaHood on economic issues, primarily the number of jobs being lost in the 18th District.

“The 18th Congressional District should be one of the richest areas in the U.S.,” he said. “It has everything going for it — transportation, land, good people, resources such as coal, and even oil wells.

“But it does not seem that we are compensated for what we produce. I walked the district and saw a lot of abject poverty, and many of the people who have jobs are what I call underemployed,” earning too little to make a decent living, he added.

“I am not here to blame Ray LaHood for that, but I can talk about it” and raise awareness of the issues, he said.

Rural losses

In addition to loss of jobs from plant closings and layoffs, Waterworth said the shrinking number of farmers has had an equal or greater effect on the area economy.

The number of central Illinois farmers who have given up farming in the past 30 years is equivalent to “three or four Caterpillar plants” closing, he added.

Other issues he believes the federal government is ignoring include the environment and global warming, the foreign trade deficit, and the United States’ status as the world’s largest debtor nation.

“If you are massively in debt and running up your credit cards every day, people may think you are living well, but eventually you will have to pay off those debts,” he said. “I don’t want to leave that kind of (national) debt for my grandchildren to pay.”

Bringing home the bacon

Incumbent members of Congress often cite their ability to obtain federal dollars and projects for their districts as a reason to reelect them. But Waterworth takes a different view.

“If Congress were doing its job, we would not need a congressman to get money to fix our streets,” he said, referring to measures such as the federal transportation bill that provided funds for road projects in Pekin and Havana.

“When a congressman says ‘I will get money to fix your streets,’ he’s really saying ‘I failed you’” by not promoting policies that would have enabled local governments to undertake those projects, he added. “Instead of bragging about it, he should be apologizing.”

During the last congressional election, Waterworth and LaHood appeared together at public forums in Peoria and Jacksonville. Waterworth had never met LaHood prior to that campaign.

“He is a very nice guy personally,” Waterworth said.

Views on Iraq

Their most recent meeting was in November at a gathering honoring Marine Lance Cpl. Tyler Ziegel of Metamora, a distant relative of Waterworth, who lost a hand and was severely burned in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.

The war in Iraq and the ultimate outcome of the sacrifices service personnel like Ziegel have made is another area where LaHood and Waterworth differ.

While LaHood has strongly defended Bush’s Iraq policy in recent public appearances — at a Veteran’s Day gathering in Pekin, for example, he predicted that the U.S. will eventually “beat down the insurgents and have a strong country there” — Waterworth opposes the war.

“The servicemen and women are doing a great job, but I think the (Bush) administration failed to understand the culture of the Middle East,” he said. “We are trying to transfer our culture to theirs, and it isn’t going to work. It reminds me of Vietnam, where people kept saying we were winning, but we never won. Eventually we will just declare ‘victory’ and leave, like we did in Vietnam.”

Public service or quid pro quo? Critics say it’s hard to tell with congressional earmarks, by Dori Meinert

Setting the record straight on earmarks process , by Ray Lahood      (Follow links to read the articles)

The real problem with the campaign contributions of corporate Political Action Committees (PACs) to congressmen isn’t just politicians returning favors to a corporation in the form of earmarks, it’s politicians providing for the benefit of corporations to the detriment of Americans.

Congressmen are elected to serve and represent the American people, not self-serving corporations with well financed PACs.

 Then at about 1100am as I was driving 60-65 mph a
black Chevy Suburban blew by me. As it passed I
noticed with interest, a bumper sticker on the driver’s side rear
window, "Congressman Ray Lahood."  I
caught up to the Suburban as it slowed for traffic, its
license plate number:  F0RL.  I followed for a short
time as the driver reached 80 mph. When it left me it
was going at least 85-90 mph. Whoever the driver was,
he put his own and others’ lives in danger
that morning with his reckless and arrogant driving, to
say nothing of the waste of gasoline.

Never has it been clearer that we have a
President and a Congress who act like the
Constitution reads "Of, By and For Big Oil" instead of
"For the People."  We need to elect people to Congress
who understand a healthy environment means more than an
environment that gets the incumbent elected every two
years.  America and the world needs to act responsibly
and drastically decrease its use of fossil fuels
over the next 10 years. We aren’t going to do it
reelecting our present Congressman or driving Chevy
Suburbans, even if a congressman with massive
contributions from corporate PACs can afford it.

Fortunately, the answer to our world’s energy crisis is all around us in the form of wind and solar energy. It just takes a Congress and a President willing to make it happen.  We were going in that direction in the 80’s until President Reagan and Congress (Illinois‘ Bob Michael) cut government funded research into alternative energy.  At that time, they also removed tax incentives for solar collecting systems. Ronald Reagan threw the American people back onto the mercy of "Big Oil" and we have suffered for it ever since.

 Some of what we are doing is right, but the scale is so small and so slow one has to wonder who Congress is working for.   We need short-term and long-term solutions.  We need to rapidly bring on hybrid electric vehicles that use either E-85 fuel or high efficiency Caterpillar bio-diesel engines. Additionally every hybrid electric vehicle should have the ability to be recharged at home off the local power grid.  This frees the owner of the car, truck or Chevy Suburban from having to use gasoline for short trips. Some people are doing this now. It’s not rocket science.

Congress needs do to more to encourage farmer and citizen owned ethanol production. I’ve been talking the merits of ethanol since the 1975.  The Farm Bureau fought it and set ethanol back 10 years. Fortunately, Farm Bureau members saw its benefits and changed that way of thinking.   We need a government agency to make low or no interest loans to help co-ops start building ethanol plants. Something similar to the very successful Rural Electrification Agency that electrified rural America in the early 20th Century.  A proven way of bringing energy to America.

We need to redevelop the solar energy industry that was effectively destroyed by Ronald Reagan.  We need to heat more hot water and produce more electricity with solar energy; supplemented with small wind turbines at every workable house storing the electricity in batteries for home use. Batteries designed and built by Peoria’s Firefly corp. that would power geothermal heating systems and even for recharging hybrid electric cars.   Home solar powered  and geothermal heating and cooling is easily available right now.  If all the money spent on nuclear plants and the disposal of nuclear waste in the last 40 years had been used for the generation of electricity using solar and wind, many Americans would be independent of power companies with no or very small monthly utility bills.

What we need to do, we must do.  We must take carbon dioxide out of the environment to slow if not stop global warming. We must lower our dependency on high priced imported fossil fuels with no end to their expense.  We must bring our foreign trade deficit into some kind of balance. We must be independent of Oil companies that seldom  work for our best interests.  It’s about freedom, freedom from the control of oil companies, Government, and from Congress.  We must keep our wealth in America, in American homes, if we’re to have the kind of economy that will enable our children and our grandchildren to prosper into the future.  Being energy independent is just as important in the "War on Terrorism" as anything else we do.  It may be more important than the war in Iraq.

Vote for your incumbent Congressman and there’s no hope for change. There really isn’t. All we’ve heard for years have been empty promises. Do you think it’s going to change? The only way to get these Republican Congressman out of "Big Oil’s Pocket" is to vote them out.

Ray Lahood, the Vice Chairman of the House Intelligence Policy and National Security Subcommittee was never informed of the existence of this program!!! Ray Lahood, the Chairman of the Terrorism and Homeland Security House Subcommittee on Intelligence was never informed!!! On May 11 at a press conference, President George W. Bush stated that all appropriate Congressional members had been informed of the secret program. Wouldn’t that include Ray Lahood? George Bush has had no more loyal supporter in Congress than Ray Lahood and this is how he’s treated.

This issue may very well be the tip of the secret iceberg. It’s difficult if not impossible to know, but it’s likely that the cell phone calls of all Americans are being monitored, e-mails being screened, every credit card transaction and check written collected by the NSA . It’s a slippery slope George Bush has put us on…a slope that could easily slide us towards the loss of freedom and privacy, if not this year, then 10, 20 or 50 years from now.

Once Big Brother gets a hold on power, it never gives it back.  The question is: Is this what Bin Laden really wanted to have happen when he attacked us on 9/11?   What’s been lost in the war on terrorism is that every American is a soldier in the battle and must be prepared to give their lives not for America, but for the U.S. Constitution.  A leader understands that and George Bush and most Republican Congressman are not leaders.  Just look at their sad history of military service during the Viet Nam war.

During the Viet Nam war, combat capable men who
supported the war, but didn’t show up active duty were
the fair weather patriots.  They were also the number
one reason for the loss of the Viet Nam war.  It
wasn’t because of the protestors that the war was
lost. There were protestors because of them!!!  Had
George W. Bush, Dick Chaney, Dan Quayle, Ray Lahood
and hundred of thousands of other combat capable men
stepped forward when their country needed them the
most, our country would not have been so divided. We
might have won. I sometimes wonder which hero on the
Viet Nam Memorial wall they’d like to trade places
with.  Maybe they’d like to take some poor draftees
place from the South Side of Peoria.  No, not likely,
not then, not now.

Forty years ago there was a waiting list to
get into the National Guard. Guardsman seldom were
called upon for the Viet Nam war. Today, during the
War on Terror" the Guard, as well as active duty, need
volunteers, no long line waiting line today. What’s
the difference?  The draft is the difference. We don’t
have one today, so today’s "fair weather patriots"
really get a free ride. Unlike the Viet Nam days no
longer do they need a draft deferment for medical
problems, for being a school teacher, or for going to
college.  Now, they just don’t show up for military
service.  Someday there will be a memorial wall with
the names of our military heroes who died fighting the
"War on Terror."  Will today’s many "fair weather
patriots" wish that their names are on that wall. No,
not likely.

After high school graduation I went to jr. college in Canton, Illinois. At that time the Vietnam War was just getting going.  The war was to become a central part of my life. After I graduated from Canton College I attended SIU. In those days I was not a particularly good student.  By  1967-68 the War was a real distraction for me, as it was for most students. After the summer of 1968 I was tired of college life, with the riots and the wholesale cheating by students, so much so, that I didn’t return in the fall of 1968, much to my parents’ dismay.

By not going back to school I was no longer deferred from military service and rather than be drafted onto the Army I was considering enlisting, like Dad, in the Marines. My close friend, Arley Abraham from West Virginia, was a Marine, fighting in Vietnam and hating it.  I know that, because he sent me a letter telling me how bad it was. I didn’t know it, but as I read his letter he was dead, having been killed by a sniper on Friday Sept 13, 1968.  Losing my buddy was a  shock to me, but his death made me want to be a Marine even more. My parents were dead set against it.  Mom wanted me to join the National Guard and Dad wanted me to join the Air Force.

In October of 1968 I drove to Springfield intending to join the Marines,not being able to find the Marine recruiting office I stopped at the Air Force recruiting office looking for directions. I walked in a Marine and came out an Airman.  The recruiter and my Dad were good salesmen. I often wonder about that decision; how and why it happened.

By the summer of 1969 I was stationed at Cannon AFB in New Mexico. At about the time Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon, I was volunteering for Vietnam, but I never received orders.  After supporting the Vietnam War from Cannon AFB, for four years, I separated in 1972.  I reentered the service in 1976 with the Illinois Air National Guard in Peoria.  I started working full time in 1980 and retired a Master Sergeant in 1995 with 26 years of military service.

I may be biased, but I believe the Illinois Air Guard in Peoria, Springfield and Scott AFB are the very best military units active or guard.  I’m glad I was a part
of them. A truly great group of people.

My Great-Grandfather fought in the Civil War to preserve the union and free the slaves.  However, the Civil War so affected our country that the majority of people, black and white, lived in poverty after the war…free but not economically free. Only a relative few prospered, generally at the expense of the working poor.

For decades after the Civil War Americans were overworked and underpaid.  When workers organized and began to bargain collectively they were finally able to improve their income and working conditions.   The success of the union movement in the 20th century, temporarily at least, broke the back of economic slavery in America by bringing wealth to working people.

Today, the workers in our country are under attack like never before. In a neverending quest for cheaper manufacturing costs and higher profit margins, American corporations, with the help of Wal-Mart, take good jobs out of the country, many to Southeast Asia and China, where workers are often as much slaves as the plantation workers in the old South.  Left behind in America are millions of unemployed and underemployed workers and their families.  The net effect is to create well educated, but poor people, desperate for reasonably well-paying jobs.  This in turn pressures organized labor to accept contracts with lower wages and fewer benefits.  Whether Asian or American, the poor are once again being used and exploited to produce wealth for corporations and their shareholders.

Where is our Congressman, or any of them for that matter, while this is happening?  "Stimulating" the economy, with a war, with earmark projects, while running up the National Debt, our debt, our children’s debt (nine trillion dollars) and then watching two billion dollars a day of wealth leave our country in the form of the Foreign Trade deficit and telling everyone what a great job they and our President are doing for us.

Poor people…a source of wealth for corporations and in turn a source of wealth for our Congressman. It’s time for a new direction.  If not now, then when?

Nice words from one who couldn’t find his way into active duty during the Vietnam war, just like other current political leaders.  Nice words from the leader of the Republican party. The party, who’s members, " Young Republicans," mostly are sitting on the sidelines, safe and sound, while our military begs for recruits to fight the Iraq war. How many of the President’s nieces or nephews have enlisted?  Aren’t they "Young Republicans?" That’s a sure sign of problems for a leader, when your most ardent supporters won’t follow you.

Two years ago, when I first was a candidate for Congress, I was debating the Iraq war with Congressman Lahood and I told him we had lost the war in Iraq. Congressman Lahood absolutely disagreed.  He looked at me like I was crazy. Here it is two years later and who was right, who was right?  What I said was, "That even if we win militarily, that because the Iraqi people hate us, we will never win; that the next Iraq government will be much more like a dictatorship, than a democracy."

If you win the war, but don’t win a democracy in Iraq, can you really say that you won the war? I don’t think so, maybe very early in the war, but not now. When we leave Iraq, the so-called terrorists of Iraq, which were in fact, George W. Bush’s made-up excuse to vindicate his Dad and get rid of Hussein, never existed as a threat to America, and will be no more of a threat to us, than the Viet Cong of the Vietnam war are today.

Years ago when the F-16 was first procured by the Air Force as a fighter airplane it was not their first choice. The Air Force wanted a two engine, two man plane more like the old, Vietnam era F-4. The F-16 first bought as a air to air fighter is now over Afghanistan being used on missions that it was never designed for, bombing and strafing.  Politicians, being what they are, forced the Texas-made F-16 on the Air Force.   It was a serious error that directly affected this incident as Bill Umbach and Harry Schmidt were forced to endure hours of solo flying without the relief that a second person in the cockpit would provide.  But then, as long as the politicians’ hometown "military industrial complex" gets what it wants, who cares about the health and well being of our military aviators?  They’re as expendable as the airplane.

The two F-16’s head for home base, a long exhausting flight in it’s own right, when they notice what looks like the tracers of ground fire aimed their way. Declaring self defense Major Schmidt drops a bomb on what were, in fact, friendly Canadian forces on a nighttime training exercise.  (Why they were allowed into a combat zone needing night time training is another issue.)   Men that Bill and Harry were there to protect, they had mistakenly attacked, killing four and wounding eight of Canada’s finest.  Two men who would fly into "Hell and come out the other side" to protect those Canadian soldiers had now by tragic mistake flown into a military bureaucratic "Hell" that first and foremost was going to protect the careers of the Generals in charge and the politicians who had started the war. All through the war on terror, low ranking officers and soldiers, would be and are being used as scapegoats for the poor planning and judgement of the Generals and politicians in charge.  For the Generals this war is a career maker or breaker, so the blame always goes downhill.

Majors Umbach and Schmidt were eventually brought before an Article 32 hearing that lasted for months.  They were threatened with years of prison time.  After months of legal wrangling, Major Umbach was allowed to retire and Major Schmidt allowed to stay in the Guard, never to fly again.  Two of the very best pilots in the United States Air Force, gone.

Through all of this, central Illinois citizens, especially veterans and veterans of combat like my Dad, rallied to the pilots defense, raising thousands of dollars to help pay their legal expenses.  Elected politicians like Governor Ryan came to their aid.  Unfortunately some elected politicians were seldom seen or heard.  The Number One politician who should have, but failed to show up in support of Bill and Harry was their Congressman, Ray Lahood.   Ray Lahood talked to Bill Umbach’s brother, Bob Umbach, one time. No staff person ever returned Bob’s phone calls. He never talked to Bill Umbach either.  There were no letters of explanation from the Congressman’s office concerning their efforts on behalf of Bill and Harry, probably because there weren’t any.  In the War on Terror, it’s Politics over the Warrior for the Congressman.

Here is an interview I conducted with a Bill Umbach’s brother, Bob, about the "support" they received from Representative Lahood during the trial.

Note:

There’s an excellent and very detailed book, "Friendly Fire" by a Canadian, Michael Friscolanti about  the friendly fire accident and the heartbreaking loss and injury to the Canadians.   In reality it’s also a book about the United States Military Justice System  and how command influence makes a mockery of the term "Military Justice."